Pictures: Dead Sea Scrolls Being Digitized for Web

Turning Point for Dead Sea Scrolls

Photograph by Sebastian Scheiner, AP

The Dead Sea Scrolls—the oldest known surviving biblical and extra-biblical texts in the world—are slated to be scanned with high-resolution multispectral imaging equipment and shared online, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Google announced Tuesday, when this picture was taken in an IAA lab.

The high-tech imaging of the scrolls—to be conducted with Google's research and development operation in Israel—was originally conceived as part of an IAA initiative to conserve the thousands of delicate papyrus and parchment fragments and monitor their conditions much more accurately and noninvasively.

According to the IAA, the technology will also help scholars rediscover writing and letters that have "vanished" over the years. And "since we're going to have the best possible images," said Pnina Shor, the IAA's Dead Sea Scrolls project manager, "we said, 'Why don't we take all the images, add to them all the translations, the transcriptions, the commentary and put them online?'"